The movie is not really worth watching. With that said, I’ll go see anything with Emma Watson in it. And I happen to like Sofia Coppola, too.

Not for her movies. Which have all pretty much been not worth watching. But for her.

In the opening credits, I saw that Francis Ford Coppola was listed. I knew then, already, that it was a mistake to have enlisted his help.

Sofia Coppola has a lot to live up to with her family name. But I think she would have been better off going about it in a non-Coppola way. Not to say she shouldn’t be making movies; just that she would do well to live up to any name, even if it isn’t the Coppola one.

In any case, it’s clear that all of the girls in the movie had a really fun time filming. They all have nice things to say about working with Sofia Coppola. So it doesn’t really matter that the movie was mostly a flop, because a new movie mafia is being formed. Just like Wes Anderson, with Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Bill Murray. It matters less about the final product and more about the bonds being forged.

I’m sure this cast and crew will continue to find ways to work together again, and eventually, something good will come out of it. That, I’m sure of.

Penelope emailed me earlier:

“you have @melissa on twitter? that’s really cool.”

One minute later, she emails again:

“you are good at twitter. i have never read your feed before.

but it’s good. fun. and smart.”

You heard it from the source, first.

I have linked to Penelope exactly twice (Being A Digital Native and Human Moments) in the two years that I’ve known her. She has linked to me only once before. So, now we’re even.

This is shocking, because depending on the varying levels of our individual (in)sanity, we probably talk somewhere between eight and forty-two times a day — or night, in my case, now that I live on the other side of the world.

I once had to change my cell phone plan in order to account for all of the extra minutes I was using to call her, all day, all the time. (You already know why she can’t call me. Her phone is always out of battery, misplaced, or legitimately lost.)

Penelope instant messaged me about three minutes before she wanted the post to go up. At 4:27AM in Hong Kong:

Penelope: are you awake?

me: hi

Penelope: i have a post with you in it. i’m sending it to you. you can add keywords

me: i do this [CRAZY INSANE REDACTED THING] that you do too!!

Penelope: i need to post now. so look now, please. i hope you like it.

me: yes of course i will read it right away

Penelope: i love that i’m writing about posting on my blog and you’re writing about [REDACTED].

Penelope: the two of us make me laugh

Penelope: we are absurd

Then she abruptly signed off. And that pretty much sums up our relationship.

Which, in case there is any doubt, is actually an incredible and inspiring friendship, one that I value so highly that I don’t know how I ever lived without it.

In her post, she wrote that I’m God’s gift to “whatever [I] want to rank high in SEO for.” And she wrote that because it’s true. What I want to rank highly in, whether it be for SEO or for life, the universe, and everything, changes on a daily basis. Sometimes hourly.

In increments smaller than that, I wouldn’t know, since Penelope dictates how many messages, emails, or texts I can send her, and within them, how many words, characters, and bullet points I can use.

Penelope: at first i was like, hey, i don’t do that! but it’s true. i do.

So, here I am. And here it is — short and sweet — and posted now.

writing | photography | style | facebook | twitter | tumblr

Fortunately, the job in NYC did not require much of a wardrobe change; just a little sharper than college, with heels all the time. That wasn’t a problem, since I’d already amassed a vast collection of shoes.

I shopped exclusively at Forever 21, and occasionally, very rarely, at H&M, because I thought it to be a bit pricey. Never at Zara, because everything seemed truly expensive to me. Still, I lived and dressed within my means, and I was always quite stylish by the standards in my industry.

At one point, in my second job in Manhattan, I documented my outfits every day for about two months, making it a point to never wear the same clothes twice. It was a fun experiment in narcissism; though, you would be surprised at how pumped up you are for work when you spend all that time fussing over yourself.

The following year, when I moved to San Francisco, it felt painfully like reversion. “Dressed up” meant flip-flops and hoodies. I felt like a scrub, as if I’d gone back to college, or worse, as if I were living at home again. I even couldn’t wear heels, because of the CLICK-CLICK-CLACK they made on the wooden floor of our uber cool exposed brick loft office in SoMa.

Especially as the only girl in office of eleven mid-twenties boymen, it just drew too much attention every time I moved from my desk. As a result, in retrospect, it seemed harder to take my job seriously, when I didn’t take myself seriously enough to get “dressed up.”

Starting my job in Hong Kong was a big shock. From where I stand, it seems that the real reason people in finance get paid the big bucks is primarily so that they can afford clothes to wear to work with people who get paid the big(ger) bucks.

Of course, in finance, there were no jeans or shorts or hats or t-shirts or hoodies or flats. Nothing cotton what-so-ever. Even the stuff I owned that I fancied to be fancy wasn’t dressy enough to make the cut. It’s all suits and skirts and stockings, in shiny and smooth fabrics, the stodgier, the stuffier, the better.

Initially, I found it terribly hard to keep up. At the beginning, I spent thousands of dollars in vain (that I didn’t have after the expenses of moving to the other side of the world) because I was desperate to feel like I fit in. Not to mention the additional cost of tailoring, because apparently, even the clothes in Asia aren’t small enough for mini-me.

My solution, my savior, has been silk. I go to open market to buy the fabric, make my own designs or copy simple designs, and take it all to my tailor. Total cost for each piece ranges from USD$50-100. Very reasonable for completely custom clothing for which I’m constantly complimented.

This is me doing more with less.

And winning at it.

###

Secondly, I’m a writer, not a poet. So, forgive me, if I suck. I’m new, I’m learning, learning to appreciate.

In college, the way I felt about poetry was similar to way my boyfriend currently feels about my deep obsession with The New Yorker magazine.

“What is it saying?” he gripes. “It’s not news, honey,” I pleadingly interject, “It’s just commentary. About news. Sometimes.” He scoffs at this. “But where are the facts!?”

Since I struggle with this in poetry, I’m going to offer an explanation about my poem before I read it. I hope you don’t mind. It’s about how I imagined it would feel to have Alzheimer’s.

Finally, a disclaimer: I am a writer by day, and a poet only by nightmare. I wrote this one in the middle of the night, after a particularly bad dream, and was surprised to find it blinking at me, as I blinked back at the computer screen in the morning after.

###

I was in a street market, covered by a big white tarp, partitioned off by wares. I was going through a section I hated, because it was the animal section, and they were not kind to animals there.

As I walk through with my head down, I see a beautiful bird, white with colorful wings, out of the corner of my eye. It is flapping its wings, beak outstretched towards the sky, but he can’t fly. His feet are tied up, at the bottom of a big, glass fishbowl, filled with water. He’s not struggling for flight, he’s struggling for life.

There is a man who is in charge of this sick spectacle, and two women watch on in untroubled fascination and breathless excitement. One women wears a bright yellow kaftan, and a matching shawl pulled over her head and face. The other women is blonde and bouncy, filming with her bright and shiny iPhone.

The man brags: “These birds can hold their breath under water for two to three minutes.” And the women ooohh and aaahh, as the bird struggles more strongly, its desperation magnified by the water and distorted by the thick round bowl.

And then the bird drowns to death, weightless in its final flight, its final fight. The women clap, and the man nods emphatically, exuding pride while attempting to project humility.

I come crashing down, crying at the cruelty, can’t stand up to the crushing weight of caustic nature in the world, slowly sensing something inside of me, fly and die, too.

###

It was a very forward-thinking institution, and was dedicated to culture, intellectualism, and perhaps most, diversity. I knew nothing about racial tension while I was there. With no offense intended or implied, my three best friends were a black, a Jap, and a Jew. But I didn’t know that as a child. They were just my three best friends, in various sizes and shapes and colors.

This school prided itself by raising children as little adults, with a solid sense of self-confidence, which could almost be construed as entitlement, but not in the spoiled, privileged way. Rather, the children all possessed educated opinions and felt free to impart their views, no matter how old they themselves were or how old the other person might be. We grew up knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we had reason to be heard and the right to ask questions. A similar phenomenon is discussed in Malcolm Gladwell’s recent book, Outliers.

Then, in fourth grade, we relocated to Austin, Texas. Suddenly, I was stuck in dim-lit dungeon with old, mean Mrs. Hopper, who had to grant you a frog-shaped laminate cut-out in order to be permitted to the powder room. I had never had to address an adult by their last name before, and I had certainly had never had to have an adult “allow” me to go to the bathroom. I found myself in some sort of alternate universe, where the textbooks were practically primitive, the children were clear subordinates of adults, and where all the faces were white.

On my first day, Mrs. Hopper seated me at desk with a cubby, and proceeded to say to the class with a deep Southern twang: “All right y’all, we’re fixing to do some reading, turn yer books to page 42.” I went home to my mother in outright indignation. How was this woman supposed to teach us English when she can’t even speak it?

Fast forward to my senior year of high school. Well, sort of.

I was merely a tourist. I got fed up with the public school system in sixth grade, and refused to go back. Luckily, my greatly supportive parents allowed me to self-school myself from seventh until tenth grade, when I graduated from high school two years early. I made the decision to go to “real” high school afterward, because it seemed like an important, invaluable bonding experience, that I would need someday around a water cooler.

I took a class with Mr. Martin, who was favorably nick-named by all students and staff as “Doc Martin.” He only taught class at “zero-hour,” which meant getting to school an hour early, before anybody else. And thus proved his popularity; I’m not sure what else could convince a bunch of high school seniors to get out of bed before they had to.

For the first time in my life, I was “Sconyers,” not merely “Melissa.”

Everyone in class learned out to pronounce my name correctly, with the ‘c’ acting as a hard ‘k.’ Doc Martin encouraged us to be opinionated, to be assertive, even to be interruptive. In many ways, I felt like I developed, or at least deepened, a new personna in that class room.

Still, to this day, I feel a bond with those classmates. Now, when we message each other on Facebook every so often, we still address each other by our last names. They’re always be Buckmann, Fann, or Galloway to me. They, too, admit that they’ll always know me in this way, in an almost sheepish manner. After all these years, is it silly to stick to something so subtle?

In college, I had a prim, proper professor who positively could only called by his full, official title (“Dr. Cox”), and I had an alternative, bohemian, feminist professor who insisted on being called by her first name (“Alison,” or “Alliterative Alison,” as per our name game on the first day). A few other of my treasured professors insisted that I call them by their first them after I was no longer in their classes, but I affectionately, purposefully, respectfully continued to call them by what I considered to be their name: Madame Lippmann, Professor Boretz, and Dr. Kushner, a.k.a Dr. K.

This personal preference was only strengthened by my time in China, where “teacher” translates roughly to “old master,” and is a coveted and commanded term of respect. Years after I’m no longer their student, and even though they’ve become friends and fixtures in my life, I’ll never be able to call them by anything else, but Ai Laoshi, Meng Laoshi, Yang Laoshi. Save for one: Camilla.

After I graduated, my first job was at a grand, global, glamorous advertising agency, where I ascertained that ole Doc Martin was right. I transformed into “Sconyers” again, and my colleagues were people like Goldberg, Stout, Clement.

A few days ago, I unintentionally offended somebody by referring to them by their last name only. I didn’t think twice about it, specifically since in my prior positions, it was a clear, formal form of respect to call each other by our last names. I apologized and explained. But it got me thinking.

What’s in a name? I answer to so many names. For me, it provides an acute form of social mapping. Depending on what a person calls me, I immediately know how they came to know me, when they came to know me, and where they came to know me. Usually, I even have an accurate idea how long it’s been since we’ve last talked.

Perhaps this is a type of transformation or transition in culture. It seems similar to the age-old process of going from daughter to mother to grandmother, or from friend to girlfriend to wife.

Names have their place in time, and their time in place.

###

1) We have mail, you know, “snail mail,” which has to physically go to a location and takes “time.”

2) Then we have email, which goes electronically to a location without requiring “time,” only requiring the time between which it arrives and which it gets read.

Then there’s the path of development to Google Buzz.

3) At some point thereafter, we get one-to-one texting (and even, accidentally one-to-more texting, kind of like three-way calling gone way wrong). It is slow and laborious to catch on. I mean, who wants to type out messages on those tiny little keys? (Read: ADULTS.) Yeah, us crazy kids. Well, WE showed them.

4) Along the same time comes chat rooms and instant messaging, where there is no delay, everything is instantaneous and synchronous. Wheeeeee! (Like, OMG, IRL! Hey! Hi! What’s up? Nothing, you? Nothing much. Hmm, A/S/L? 18/F/California. Oooh, wanna cyber? (…Except with a lot more abbreviation and a less capitalization and punctuation. u no?)

5) Facebook, The All Mighty. Where we can all passively expel information about our lives to our “friends,” or shall I say, our “audience,” whoever they might be. These people, on the other end, can passively or aggressively or ignoringly consume your information. Facebook is like a me-to-you relationship, where “you” means everybody you know, have even known, kinda sorta know, or think you maybe might know, but you’re really not sure and you don’t care to verify, because, let’s face it, you like it when your friend count goes up. (Me? I have a pithy 1,927 friends and counting.)

Add me if you’re interesting, intellectual, and/or attractive, and we can eventually slash soon become best internet buddies!!~~@!

5) Yeah, yeah, so somewhere along these lines, we get Twitter, which is sort of like, I’m going to instant message “you,” whereby “you” means, like, the collective you, like the interwebs, like you and everybody I know and everybody you know and everybody else we don’t know. Cool. Look at me. Twitterdeeeeeeeeeee. I’m @melissa. Booya. I’ve got 1,734 followers, and I’ve had 2,448 short, witty bursts of intellectual banter. Follow me. Then continue reading.

6) Then there is the cultural subtext of the Twitter Direct Message, which is like “you’re more special than the interwebs, so i message you privately, but instead of choosing a relatively more semi-synchronous communication (instant message, facebook message, text message, or *SHOCKHORROR* a phone call), I’ll send the shorter equivalent of an email. (Refer to Point #2)

7) And finally, on the 7th day, GODoogle created Buzz. A way for you, your friends, your family, and EVERYBODY YOU HAVE EVER EMAILED WITH (Like, hey yoooo, sup, you former-potential-craigslist-roomie-who-turned-out-to-be-a-WEIRD-TOTAL-CREEP-and-SMELLY), to have a theoretically no-reply function which is in all actuality a reply-all function, stuffed unceremoniously and randomly into your beloved, ferociously guarded inbox. (Cue theme song: “This is the song that neverrrr endssssss, it goes on and on MY FRIIIIIIIIIENDS…..“

8) There is no number eight. I’m not buzzed about Google Buzz. In fact, I’m not even buzzed. I’m drinking a glass of soy milk on the rocks.

Where’s my telepathy at? I THOUGHT THE FUTURE WAS COMING.

###

I stopped the first person I saw. It was an unsuspecting 16-year-old girl, who walked about half a mile out of her way to help me buy my train tickets. She was slightly plump, with a round, kind face, and told me she was still in high school. When I asked her what she planned to study in college, she struggled to find words in English. “Lawyer!” she said triumphantly a few long seconds later. I inquired what kind of lawyer, and she replied simply, “Children,” and nodded sharply to punctuate her statement.

Once I had tickets in hand, the girl walked me to the electronic turnstiles, and turned about-face to me, signifying her work here was done. I thanked her several times, bowing my upper-body ever so slightly towards her with each repetition of gratitude. I fumbled with my unwieldy bag to pull out a business card before I walked through. I said sincerely, “If you ever come to America, please let me know,” and her eyes lit up in surprise and delight as she slowly ran her fingers over the thick card stock, carefully examining the fine print.

A train was waiting at the platform, so I stopped a young, well-dressed guy to find out if it was the correct train. Showing him my ticket and pointing at the train, I asked, “This one?” He replied affirmatively in fluent, only-ever-so-slightly accented English, and for a passing moment, I felt very small and silly.

I was relieved to find a seat on the train, and I sat with my head resting to the side against one of the poles. A few minutes later the doors closed and the train started moving. I was staring intently down at my ticket, memorizing the characters, and waiting for them to show up on the screen, when a guy sat down next to me. He sees me studying the ticket, and tells me Yokohama is 13 stops away.

The right characters flashed up on the screen, and I jump up and out. Following instructions, I find some a big escalator and go up them. At the top, I know immediately that I’m not in the right place. There are some shady looking guys standing in the shadows of the corner, hawking brochures of some sort. I innocently ask them where I might find the Disney store where I’m supposed to be meeting my friends.They point me in a direction, but as I start walking away, the familiar feeling of anxiety starts to well up in my chest. I realize I
am lost. Again.

Then I stopped in my tracks. I wasn’t lost. I simply had nowhere to go except exactly where ever I wanted to go. And I was enjoying the journey immensely.

Coming out on the other end of an alleyway, there is an enormous lot, inexplicably filled with rows and rows of taxis parked ten deep, all with their lights on, ready and waiting. The picture is just too good to miss, and I jump up onto a nearby ledge, and start playing with the shot through my viewfinder.

The outside world ceases to exist as I fiddle with focus points, adjust the exposure, and determine depth-of-field. A shallow man walks by and says, “Excuse me?” followed by something sarcastic in Japanese.
His colleagues bellow with laughter. I turn around, and he delivers the punchline in English: “Nice view.” But he’s not talking about the scene I’m capturing. I turn back around without further acknowledging
him, and go back to the task at hand. Deciding that I need a wide-angle lens instead, I am in the middle of balancing on this ledge and juggling two heavy lenses and an even heavier camera, when another
man stops near me.

I ignore him. But he doesn’t move on. After a long moment, he sings out in fast, broken English to get my attention: “Excuse me, ex-coo-sahh me, are you lost?” I open my mouth to reply, but I don’t have an answer. I know I’m lost, but this fact doesn’t concern me in the least. I know I’ll get where I’m going. Eventually.

The persistent man asks again, “Are you loss-taaa? Do you need heeelp-a?” I pause before hesitantly agreeing, that yes, technically, I am indeed lost.

“Where are you going?” When I answer, he just stands there, scratching at the thinning hair on his head in confusion. He starts asking me about Queens, Queens Square, Queens Mall, and I shrug, nonplussed. He
indicates my destination is at a different station, and he tells me the name, which is long, multi-syllabic, and starts with an M.

I nod in polite acknowledgment, pretending that I knew what he was talking about, and I tell him I will take the train there. I thank him, before turning away to start fumbling with my camera again, still
determined to get my picture.

But the man isn’t reassured. He stays rooted to the ground behind the ledge, deeply concerned that I am completely unconcerned about being lost. I can tell he is getting nervous, because although his English
was originally passable, he beings to interject bursts of incomprehensible Japanese into the middle of sentences and sometimes in the middle of words.

He sharply insists that I must go back to the train station where I came from, and explain to them that I got off at the wrong stop. He is now very emphatic about the fact I’m at the wrong stop, and continues trying very hard to convey the fact I am wrong and this stop is wrong.

I assume he’s trying to tell me how to get back into the train station without buying another ticket, so in an exasperated moment of sensibility, I reluctantly lower my camera from its poised position and ask him nicely if he could help me with this, since he speaks Japanese and I, obviously, do not.

His reaction is strange, and he startles me by waving his hands and quickly backing a few steps away from me. “Oh, no, no, noooo, I cannot, cannot do that, cannot accompany you.”

I thank him, again, more firmly this time, and turn around, again, to finish taking the damn picture. He stands there for a little while, watching me, unsure of what to do with this strange, lost girl who is completely, inconceivably unconcerned with being lost.

As he is awkwardly standing back, unsure of what to do next, I finally get my shot, and then jump off the ledge to start walking towards the station. He walks off in the other direction, seemingly satisfied that I am finally going to do something about this being lost business.

I think he’s gone his way, but a few seconds later, I hear the sharp sound of dress shoes pounding on pavement. He runs back up to me, holding out a magazine in front of him, as an offering of, well, I’m not sure what. I look at it blankly, and my arms stay by my side.

“It’s in English language. For you.” I hesitantly take it him, thank him for the very last time, and walk towards the station again. This time, he doesn’t move until he ensures that I’ve gone back inside to find my way, like any normal, sane person would do when they’re lost.

When I finally do arrive where I am supposed to be, it’s quite in the evening, and I’m sure I’ve missed dinner. I see the “big escalator” my friends told me about. This escalator is so large and so long, that the children of the mother who is standing behind me actually sit down on the moving steps, making themselves comfortable as they wait patiently, tiredly to reach the top.

Though I’ve arrived at my destination, I can’t seem to find the friends I’m meeting for dinner. I shrug to myself, and then step outside into warm, balmy air. The balcony overlooks the waterfront and a collection of small, old fashioned, neon-lit carnival rides. I find another ledge, nimbly hop onto it, and begin taking more pictures. Completely content to be exactly where I am at that exact moment in time.

###

I waved down an empty cab, and the friendly middle-aged man smiled widely. He impressed me by he pressing a button that automatically opened the rear passenger door. After laboriously pulling my baggage and myself into the car, I showed him the English name of the hotel. He repeated the name out loud a few times, transliterating it into Japanese. “Met-sa ho-tel-a.” He repeated it again, elongating each syllables as he sat deep in thought, quietly questioning if he knew the location. “Met-saaa ho-telll-aaaa?”

He pulled forward, asking a traffic controller a few questions in rapid-fire Japanese. After a few minutes, he merged into traffic and we were on our way. Turns out, the hotel was very close, but hard to find. We drove around the block a few times until we found it. I gave him 1250 yen, or about thirteen dollars, and thanked him profusely.

The following day, I set out to find a MUJI store that was fairly close to where I was staying, or so I had gathered from my online research. In the lobby of the hotel, I asked the receptionist to write down the address, so that I could take a taxi there. She seemed surprised that I wanted to take a taxi, and then seemed sorry for her surprise, shyly saying that it was “only maybe 15 minutes by walking.” She gave me a bad map with worse directions, and off I went.

I was lost practically before I even begun, and stopped somebody on the street right outside the hotel. He pointed me in the right direction.

After walking for awhile, I cornered a couple for further help. At this point, I realized I had forgotten to get the receptionist to write MUJI down in Japanese. I tried various pronunciations of the word. “Moooojii? Mewwwjiii,” I mused out loud. Finally, a spark of recognition crossed the couple’s faces, and they said, “Oh! MUJI!” I smiled at my success and nodded emphatically. The man put his hand on his chin, and then asked, “You mean, no name quality goods.” Yes. Exactly what I was looking for.

A few minutes of directional hand-waving later, I was on my way again.

I was told to cross a few intersections, and then turn right at the big intersection. The second or third intersection was fairly large, so I started to wonder if I would know which intersection was the “big intersection.” Then I happened upon what I later learned was called Hachiko Crossing, and realized there was no way I could have missed it.

It was quite possibly the biggest, busiest intersection I ever seen. And unlike China, these people were all waiting patiently. Nobody jaywalked, not even a single person. There wasn’t even jostling at the front lines, but I found a place out of trampling distance anyway, standing rooted to the ground in awe. When the walk light lit up, people poured onto the street.

With a lamp pole at my back, I contemplated what “turn right” even meant. There were no less than five different corners at this intersection. I watched several the lights change several times, before I spotted a gaijin, a foreigner, on my left. I turned to him and asked if he knew where I could find the nearby MUJI. I pulled out my map, and he furrowed his brow as he read some of the Japanese aloud. At this exact moment, the light turned again, and we were swept up and across along with the massive masses who were moving. He chatted idly with me as he led me, and I found out he was from Philly. We parted ways, and he left me in front of LoFT, which I explored before continuing in my quest to find MUJI.

By this point, I had taken no less than 27 wrong turns. The temperature was rising, I was getting overheated from wearing too much clothing as the temperature of the day continued to rise, and feeling tired from carrying my ten-pound camera and wearing four-inch high heeled boots. I had been lost for hours, and the familiar feeling of anxiety was starting to well up in my chest.

Then I stopped in my tracks. I wasn’t lost. I simply had nowhere to go except exactly where ever I wanted to go. And I was enjoying the journey immensely.

###

First dates are completely, totally, and inexcusably obsolete. There is just no good reason for them to exist any longer.

Join me, my friends, in the quest to eliminate first dates forever. I am hereby refusing to ever go on a first date again.

And it’s not because I’m condeming myself to a life of isolation and celibacy. No, no. It’s just that I don’t want to ever again be in the awkward position of staring at the stranger in front of me and trying desperately to find something, anything, to talk to them about.

Think about the concept behind the word “relationship.” A relationship, of any kind, fundamentally can’t exist without something on which to relate.

That’s why you need context. To find out how to effectively achieve this, everybody should turn to us, the Facebook generation, and take an important lesson.

We wouldn’t go out with somebody before first checking out their interests to make sure we don’t have film or literary tastes that will direly clash, or you know, disagree about trite, trivial things like religion or politics. We wouldn’t agree to being confined to a dinner table with someone without cruising through their news feed to make sure they aren’t going to bore you to death by the time dessert arrives. And we definitely wouldn’t agree to a date before carefully examining each and every one of their 1,827 photos to extract hidden clues about their personality.

It’s just not efficient to sit around and tell your entire life story anymore. Not that it ever was, but there is certainly no excuse for it now. We invest an enormous about of time, painstakingly documenting and sharing the stories and images of our lives online. A potential date should want to take a little bit of time to absorb all of that in advance, so that neither of you waste any time on something that isn’t wasn’t ever going to work out.

Sure, there will always still be a “first date,” but it won’t feel the same. You’ll be able to relate to each other already, because you’re starting out at a higher level. (That is, of course, assuming they still want to go out with you after finding you on Facebook. They could determine that you’re a total weirdo.)

So, next time, instead of giving somebody your number, give them your name and networks. Let them get to know you. Digitally.

Just don’t forget to look through their album of Profile Pictures. You can learn a lot about a person from the photos they choose as their Profile Pictures.

###